Oh well, we said, it’s time the van got a deep clean anyway. 
Coming and going Saturday and Sunday they raised dust clouds. Cars drove by from sunrise till midnight many at speed raising dust storms as they rushed to find serene wilderness at the bend of the roughly graded gravel road, number 585 to Ice Lake Trailhead.
And yet our spot alongside the road was lovely. We kept the windows closed.
We have discovered the San Juan National Forest just outside Silverton is extremely popular and justifiably so.
This was one of the last summer weekends families could get out here before school and Fall close in and they took advantage with campers filling campgrounds and roof top tents and ground tents and Jeeps and trucks and mini vans rushing up and down the dirt road.
An altitude of 9400 feet didn’t slow Rusty down, but for me altitude is something I seen to be slow to adjust to. We’ve been camping above 8,000 feet for a couple of weeks and I still get breathless walking uphill. Not Rusty.
He seemed to enjoy the views as much as I did.
I watched the freezing cold water rush through the valley and I wondered about the desert dwellers to the south, hot and dry and dusty. 
I don’t miss motorcycling but what I do miss is the innocence I had before my accident. Riding dirt on a heavy cruiser with no helmet gloves or jacket…. That will hurt. And it’s a shame I can’t see the joy and the carefree ride any more.
We put our table and chairs among the aspens and watched the sun cross the cloudless blue sky.
Almost cloudless.
At night the cars kept coming and going. I was half inclined to leave and get closer to our appointment in Montrose 90 minutes north in a less dusty place. Layne liked it here so I ignored the cars and ignored the dust and while Layne amused herself cooking I walked Rusty and read and watched the aspens shimmer.
The weather we have pursued this long hot summer has stayed true to altitude, hot near ninety in the afternoon and cool at night such that we need blankets. Our last morning here at 9400 feet when I turned the engine on at 7 am to start the drive to the Ram dealer in Montrose the dashboard thermometer read 35 degrees.
Most pull outs along the road were taken, and popular they are for people with cars who could set up their camp tents away from the road. I had to pull out our Go Treads, folding sand planks for use if we get stuck that do double duty as leveling blocks on a slope. They worked perfectly.
Rusty wanted to walk the road for reasons known only to himself so I took advantage to photograph the washboard created by fast driving in loose soil. It wreaks havoc on vehicle suspension.
I first met washboard riding a motorcycle in West Africa in 1979 and I was told the way to handle it is to get up to 50 miles an hour and the bone jarring bumps fade away. They do but it takes fearless determination and a long open road to get that fast on this stuff. The local off roaders preferred to bounce their trucks to death.
I felt fortunate that we had nowhere to go and no deadline to go home. In the evening Rusty would collapse on his bed. As Layne made dinner a slow dusk fell outside accompanied by cooling temperatures, from the back of the van came the sounds of crunching from the slowest eater in the world on his bed. We had salad and some wild creation from the chef, eggplant sort of Parmesan, breakfast for dinner with egg in the hole or a towering impossible burger, the best meatless meat I’ve had and we aren’t vegetarians.
I’ve been hacking along through the history of the Mormons attempting to create an independent nation in the west and the slow moving efforts of the US army to put down the insurrection. They traveled nine miles a day with their ox carts on their way to Utah. And were constantly starving and freezing on their road to suppressing an insurrection on the orders of Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War in 1857. History is packed with irony.
I look at GANNET2 and once again think how lucky I am.
